


And are you happy?

by sternflammenden



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-27
Updated: 2012-11-27
Packaged: 2017-11-19 16:11:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/575146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternflammenden/pseuds/sternflammenden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because, all things considered, Lady of the Dreadfort is a rather thankless thing to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And are you happy?

“Marriage,” Barbrey says to her sister. “Marry him high, as high as you dare, and he will be happy, because he will be free. And you will be well-connected.”

But Bethany thinks on her sister’s contrivances and dalliances, how she rides in Brandon Stark’s train like a lapdog. There is no freedom in this, rather something like slavery, servitude. Her son will not bend the knee to a haughty wife of a great house, her scorn and contempt his only affections. She thinks it best to aspire, but not to overreach, and while for now her plotting must needs be clandestine, as he is not even a year old, she keeps it, and keeps it close. 

“We are not so eager as that,” she says, but gently, realizing that her words could cut too near to the matter, could wound her sister in a way that the blades of her borrowed sigil would never do. “I would have him be happy, before bartering him away. Is that not what we all want?”

Barbrey only looks at her. 

“And are you happy, sister?” 

Bethany does not answer. She thinks on her child, the only one that’s lived thus far, remembering the stillbirths, the miscarriages, the few that died in their cradles, and how her husband only stared at her with each disappointment, not voicing what came to both of their minds, almost unbidden, like a nasty whisper. _Bad blood._ She thinks on her wedding, and how her excitement at finally becoming something aside from her father’s drudge, Lord Rodrik’s tool, dissipated when she inherited the closed-off rooms, the empty corridors, the skittish servants of the Dreadfort. She thinks on how no one speaks to her, only stares, gaping, wondering at what sort of woman _he_ would marry, their eyes undressing her, fearing her, and hating her. 

She thinks on the knife and what she’s done with it, and how dirtying her hands was so easy.

She digs her nails into her palms because she will not cry in front of her sister. Later, she will find the wounds and smile grimly. 

And she doesn’t know what to say until her son, swaddled in his crib, wakes, and with a soft cry calls for his mother. Bethany gathers him in her arms, pressing him close, determined to make this one live somehow, to see him a man grown with children of his own, a faceless wife, a long life spread before him, his rule quiet and peaceful, but somehow _better_. 

Domeric smiles at his mother and she returns it.

“Yes,” Bethany says then, “of course I am.”


End file.
